Top Social

Main Menu

They're not the same, they're similar!

Friday, August 15, 2014

Today I have a fun post. You ever get excited over a brand new color of nail polish only to bring it home and realize you have one that's almost exactly the same? In the nail polish world a dupe is color that's exactly the same or pretty close to another. That's not necessarily what I mean though. I was going through my stash, organizing it and finding places to store recent purchases when it dawned on me that I had several colors that were all a type of purple with a golden shimmer or glitter. I also had several minty greens/light teals and golden, shimmery, texture polishes. So let's compare! (All these are 2 coats, no topcoat).

Let's start with the purples! All of these are basically purples with some type of golden shimmer or glitter. Left to right the bottles are CrowsToes Jotunheim, Pahlish La Belle Endormie, ORLY Fantasea, Essie It's Genius, ORLY Oui, and ORLY Digital Glitter.

Once swatched on the nails they don't look so similar. Index finger is Essie It's Genius, middle is ORLY Oui, ring is ORLY Fantasea and pinky is ORLY Digital Glitter.

Here is CrowsToes Jotunheim on the index finger, Pahlish La Belle Endormie on the middle, and to compare ORLY Oui on the ring and Essie It's Genius on the pinky. Both La Belle Endormie and It's Genius have a reddish base, making them look more magenta under certain lights. Oui and Jotunheim are more deep purples. Jotunheim has a chunkier glitter while La Belle Endormie has finer glitter, Oui and It's Genius have fine gold shimmer. Overall, Jotunheim and Oui are the most similar to each other, while It's Genius and La Belle Endormie are smilar. However I would not call any of these dupes. The most different ends up being Digital Glitter which is actually a glitter topper with purple, gold and black glitters on an iridescent base. Now this means that I can't justify getting Pahlish Black Lace Elderberry or KB Shimmer Witch Way since those would also be purples with golden/copper shimmer or flakes. Meh.

Up next the minty greens and teals! This is actually my favorite color so I'm surprised I don't have more. Left to right is Sinful Colors Mint Apple, KB Shimmer Mint-al Vacation, China Glaze For Audrey (mini) and Essie Turquoise and Caicos. The pic on the upper left corner of the collage is what they look like indoors which is more true to life than the outdoor shots.

These are all very similar. Mint Apple has golden shimmer, Mint-al Vacation is a linear holo, For Audrey is a classic teal/aquamarine creme and Turquoise and Caicos looks very green in the sunlight when in reality it's really similar to the base color for Mint-al Vacation. I've been wanting to get Essie Mint Candy Apple and In the Cab-ana for a really long time but thinking about it, those would be really similar to these as well. Oh well.

And lastly, two textured glitters that look really similar in the bottles but stand out when viewed in full sunlight. Left is ORLY Rose Pixel and right is Color Club Apollo Star.

These look really similar in the shade and indoors. In the sunlight you can tell that Rose Pixel (on my index and ring fingers) is more rosy and has larger silver glitters throughout while Apollo Star is a silvery golden color. Seriously, I can't tell, sometimes it looks more silver and other times more gold. It's supposed to be silver but when you hold the bottle next to a silver texture like OPI Solitaire, then it becomes clear that it has a golden shimmer to it as well. By the way, I thought about it but didn't swatch Solitaire because it was so obviously silver to me and not the same golden shimmery color as the other two.

So what do you guys think? Is it ok to have so many similar colors or should I destash some of them?

3 comments on "They're not the same, they're similar!"

I think you should get more similar ones for more comparison posts! :)Seriously, though, thanks for the post - I do love to see comparison posts - it helps to decide on getting some of the polishes I think about getting!

You're welcome Lara! Well I just realized I have 4 duochrome color shifting ones that are also very similar, plus some greys. I also have more blues than the ones I posted, those were just the minty/light teal ones. But yeah...I had at least 2-3 more of those purples with golden shimmer on my wishlist and Different Dimension has several more that they just released in their new collection. So hard not to buy them all.

Custom Post Signature

About

I'm Nadia, a Puerto Rican mom of 2 kids who relocated to Florida and loves her nail polish. I'm a sci-fi and book nerd with an art degree, a husband, and a dog. A love of nail polish helped me overcome a nail biting habit of 22 years. I write about nail polish, nail art, beauty and cosmetics, with a little bit of lifestyle blogging. Contact me at nadia.l.velez@gmail.com.